HBO Max Is Betting Big on Human Curation and People’s Love of ‘Friends’

WarnerMedia attempted to lift the veil on its upcoming streaming service HBO Max during its Winter 2020 TCA presentation. Kevin Reilly, Chief Content Officer of HBO Max and President of TNT, TBS, and TruTV was on hand along with HBO Max Head of Original Content Sarah Aubrey and Michael Quigley, Head of Content Acquisitions for HBO Max, TNT, TBS, TruTV, and HBO to flesh out the details of the streaming service’s launch. Reilly explained that HBO Max aims to serve the user with a more human touch and announced a slew of new deals for the service.

HBO Max is set to launch in May 2020 with an initial monthly subscription cost of $14.99 per month. The new service will feature HBO’s original offerings, as well as favorites like Friends, niche hits like Search Party, and over 2000 films (with a 500 classic films in their initial library). However, it seems that unlike Disney, which launched Disney+ by dramatically opening up its legendary vault, HBO Max will not dump every show or film they have the rights to on the service. Reilly explained that he believes that the demand for those library titles flattens over time and that curating specific titles makes the experience special.

Reilly was once more questioned about the name of the streaming service, HBO Max, which might be confusing to some users. “We had robust debates and conversations and studies about [the HBO Max] name,” Reilly told reporters, explaining that WarnerMedia isn’t a brand name like Disney. “HBO is a highly recognized brand,” he said.

And HBO’s original content will now funnel right into the HBO Max library. Reilly also said that customers could continue to subscribe to just HBO Now as an SVOD service (but since HBO Now costs the same per month as HBO Max, it seems like WarnerMedia definitely wants to shepherd those subscribers to their new service).

WarnerMedia also made a number of announcements during the session, including that they had green lit a three-part animated Aquaman miniseries from Aquaman director James Wan, a docu-series about Wolfgang Puck and his catering staff called The Event, an anthology series about life in a future ravaged by climate change from Adam McKay called The Uninhabitable Earth, and the inking of a three-year deal with Steven Soderbergh. HBO also confirmed that the first two episodes of their adaptation of Americanah would be directed by Chinonye Chukwu.

Besides that, details were slight on HBO Max’s offerings. Reilly couldn’t confirm that the Friends reunion project was going forward, saying it was still classified as a “maybe.” Aubrey said they were in early stages of casting the Gossip Girl reboot and that they breathed “a sigh of relief” when they read the first scripts and found they were good.

HBO Max launches in May 2020.